New London Pleasure Gardens opens near Royal Victoria Dock

02.08.12

With the Olympics fully underway and the world watching, the focus quite naturally is on sport. But not so far from the Olympic stadium exists the Pleasure Gardens. This brand-new space, created by the Royal Victoria docks, will be viewed by thousands of people during course of this year’s Olympics.

The area contains many derelict buildings and premises, and to enhance the look and feel of these buildings, a Street Art event was held in early July 2012. Many of the worlds leading Street Art creators were invited to produce massive graffiti on the sides of these derelict buildings.

One of the many artists invited was Shepard Fairey. Fairey was the founder of the Obey clothing company. His streetwear brand has become synonymous with the world of graffiti and urban streetwear clothing. During the events at the pleasure Gardens, Fairey created some gigantic Street Art to rival the largest of this sort of art in the world.

With all the eyes of the world on London, it is indeed fascinating that Street Art should be selected to be included in the events of such a mainstream occasion. So does this mean that graffiti or Street Art should be seen as mainstream?

The extreme reactions, both good and bad, that graffiti creates seems to be irreconcilable and, for some, the concepts of painting buildings will always be something that they find distasteful. However there can be no doubt that when cities such as Bristol, Melbourne and now the Pleasure Gardens, put Street Art into a mainstream event programme the debate is brought much closer to the general public, in pubs, in bars and anywhere that normal debate takes place.
Fairey’s clothing company, Obey, produce, what was once, a clothing range for a subculture that needed a form of identity that could be expressed in the clothes they wore. Getting Obey, UK side, has become relatively easy and although many of us will never come across this range in our high streets those in the know, know that there are many Internet sites in the UK that sell much of this company’s streetwear.

Mens urban clothing from streetcasuals.com, amongst many other online e-commerce sites, means that any aspiring Street Artist can select the appropriate outfit for their self-expression whether this be a snapback uk based distributor, that has all the designs that the USA has, or any of the plethora of items that the Obey catalogue contains.

The Pleasure Gardens will long outlast the Olympics and the Street Art contained therein will survive too. For anyone who wishes to experience art on this massive scale it would seem that a stroll through the Pleasure Gardens will put you in touch with the work of what once was a very small and exclusive artist’s social commenting and outpourings. To experience Fairey’s clothing range any online search for “obey uk” will highlight many of the online outlets that sell his streetwear this side of the pond.